Email   Print

Six eco-trends reshaping the fashion industry

Major brands and young, globally minded designers alike are asking the question: How do you come up with a garment that is sustainable, that can stand on its own and not rob from the future? Here are six trends that eco-designers are currently following.

1) Know your supplier

These 1970s-inspired “Volley” sneakers from the french-brazilian Veja company are made from organic cotton grown by cooperatives of small farmers in brazil.

Photo: Veja

Any idea you might have that ethical fashion is for dour do-gooders disappear when you see the French-Brazilian company Veja’s line of 1970s-inspired sneakers. "The main reason ethical fashion wasn’t selling was it didn’t have a sexy image," explains Elizabeth Laskar of the Ethical Fashion Forum, a network of designers and fashion industry leaders in London. Veja shoes are sexy and chic enough to be an impulse buy, but they’re also the product of a meticulously cultivated supply chain from farmer to seamstress to salesperson to consumer. "We wanted to start from scratch," says Sébastien Kopp, who co-founded the company with François-Ghislain Morillon in 2005.

When Kopp started looking for growers in Brazil who could consistently produce the materials he needed—organic cotton, wild-harvested rubber and vegetable-tanned leather—he found many farmers cultivating less than an acre of cotton and rubber harvesters who had no business know-how. Working with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), he helped organize and train the farmers in the Ceará region, developing the market for cotton. "It’s a global fight to work with very small producers," he says. "They’re far away from communication links and roads. You have to know them, know their challenges and know the paradoxes in the field. But it has a long-term benefit for everybody." Kopp is convinced that relationship-based supply chains are scalable; his company is growing fast, without advertising, and demand is strong on five continents. "If two crazy French guys did it, it’s possible," he quips.

2) Just say no to waste

The Zero messenger Bag from Rickshaw Bagworks is made from a single roll of cloth, with not a scrap wasted.

Photo: Rickshaw Bagworks

When he founded Rickshaw Bagworks, Mark Dwight was frustrated with the wasteful cycle of seasonal forecasting and overproduction common in the accessories industry. "I started looking just at the engineering part of this problem," he says. "How do I get rid of waste in manufacturing?" His answer: a modular design concept featuring a classic bag interior and trend-driven fabrics on the exterior flaps. Since the interior remains the same, and can be updated with seasonal fabric styles, Dwight doesn’t stockpile unsold finished goods that need to be dumped at season’s end. He has also created the Zero Bag, made from a single piece of nylon, with not a scrap wasted. "Mother Nature has a certain healing capacity and we’ve exceeded that capacity, so now we’re starting to live in our own waste," Dwight says. "As a species, we’re smart enough to solve just about any problem. Now is the time."

3) Close the loop

When you wear out a Patagonia garment, you don’t have to feel guilty about disposing of it. Just take it to a Patagonia location and it’ll be recycled into something new. "When you look at this raw material, which is in essence the same raw material as the end product, reusing it makes sense," says Patagonia’s Dumain. The company’s directors are working to make all products recyclable by 2010. The firm has already seen energy and carbon emissions reductions as a result. "The more we learn about how much energy it takes to grow, extract or mine raw material, the more we’re convinced that closed-loop cycles make sense," says Dumain. Adds the California College of the Arts’ Grose: "The old model was linear; you make it, sell it and dispose of it. The new model is cyclical."

Designs like this one by Mia Nisbet are made from castoff clothes, in this case purchased in African markets.

Photo: Mia Nisbet

4) Start upcycling

With millions of tons of perfectly usable clothes thrown away every year, designers have started tapping into this waste stream for raw material and inspiration. Britain’s Junky Styling and Canada’s Preloved brands have both made fresh "upcycled" designs constructed from clothes that would otherwise end up in the landfill. U.K.-based designer Mia Nisbet has gone a step further. In her fashion studies at the Glasgow School of Art, Nisbet discovered one of the disturbing side effects of fashion’s fast-consumption model is that old clothes get dumped on markets in Africa. "When these clothes are exported to African countries, it can be devastating to the fashion economy," she says.

To turn this situation around, she started a business based in Malawi. She purchases castoff clothes from street markets and hires local tailors to construct her creative designs, which mix Western styles and locally produced traditional Malawian textiles. Her clothes, sold in boutiques in London and Los Angeles, bring lost fashion wages back to Malawi’s economy. Nisbet hopes her initiative will inspire consumers to look at their own closets differently. "The way the disposable fast fashion market is going these days, it’s important to take stock of what we’ve already got. People don’t realize what they’ve already got in their wardrobe may have the potential to be something different."

5) Go global

Designer Samant Chauhan supports weavers in India, preserving local traditions of silk production—not to mention the silkworms—to create couture garments like this dress from his latest collection.

Photo: Samant Chauhan

It used to be that designers in Paris, New York and Milan would send out their concepts to be produced by cheap labor in the rest of the world. But fashion shows and shops increasingly showcase designers from developing economies like South Africa, Brazil and India. Tamsin Lejeune, director of London’s Ethical Fashion Forum, says this will support the evolution of an increasingly equitable marketplace. "For emerging economies, fashion is an inspirational way they can access more trade," she says. "It’s a more sustainable model, which isn’t exclusively about businesses in the West sourcing [in the developing world.]"

Many of these designers are also attuned to environmental and social issues. Samant Chauhan, from Bihar, India, has created a widely acclaimed line of couture silk garments made entirely from silk harvested without killing the silkworm. Chauhan aims to preserve the age-old spinning and weaving techniques in his native village, Bhagalpur. "This was my hometown but I was not aware of this silk," he says. "When I was in fashion school, I came to know this is something very unique." Now he works with a local NGO to organize craftspeople to negotiate with buyers from the apparel and home décor industries.

6) Take it slow

Natalie Chanin may run Alabama Chanin from an abandoned T-shirt mill in her hometown of Florence, Alabama, but her business model is radically different from those mass production days. Chanin takes a "slow" approach to fashion. Slow design focuses on quality and on "an awareness of the materials and the people making them," says Kate Fletcher, a U.K.-based fashion consultant, credited with applying the concept to fashion.

Chanin draws inspiration from the days of Alabama’s quilting bees, when women would gather to hand-stitch quilts, and from her grandparents, who lived simply and grew their own food. "It seemed to me my grandparents actually had it right," Chanin says. "They lived with respect for everything around them." Chanin’s garments are created with that same respect for quality and craftsmanship. They are handpainted and embroidered by local craftswomen. "How much better would it be," she muses "if we only bought things that we love so much we never want them to leave our life?" Chanin also sells patterns and raw materials for those who want to try making their own.

Chanin’s company may be small but it’s leading a new trend, in which style is defined not only by the cut of the cloth, but by the integrity of the business model.

Carmel Wroth is a writer whose latest ambition is to learn to sew.

<< PREVIOUS   1 2
view as a single page